Malaysia confirms restart of search for MH370 wreckage
Malaysian Transport Minister Loke Siew Fook said on the 25th that the underwater exploration company Ocean Infinity has deployed ships in the Indian Ocean to resume the search for the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
In response to media reports earlier that the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had been restarted, Loke said at a press conference: “Ocean Infinity has begun to mobilize their ships… We have approved the restart (of the search) in principle, and now we just need to finalize the contract and sign it.”
Loke said that the search will not be carried out indefinitely, and the contract will set a clear time frame, and the specific details are yet to be finalized.
Loke stressed that Ocean Infinity has guaranteed that the new round of searches is based on the research and data of many experts.
“They believe that the current search area is more credible because they have searched a large area before and believe that this area is the part that was missed in the past search.” Loke said that Ocean Infinity is confident of making progress in the area and is willing to take risks, which is why the Malaysian government decided to move forward with this operation.
Earlier in the day, media reported that the Ocean Infinity search ship “Armada” arrived at a new search area in the Indian Ocean about 1,500 kilometers off the coast of Perth, Australia, last weekend and began searching the seabed using underwater robots.
Malaysia previously stated that Ocean Infinity’s restarted search was based on the principle of “no money if nothing is found.” According to the terms of the contract, any discovery must be credible and cannot be just some debris, and the specific standards will be listed in the contract.
On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which was flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China, lost contact with 239 people on board. On January 29, 2015, the Malaysian Civil Aviation Authority announced that the flight had crashed and presumed that all people on board had died.
Since the loss of contact with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the wreckage of the plane has been found in many parts of the world, and the search has been started and interrupted many times. In December last year, Malaysia said that the search plan proposed by Ocean Infinity was “credible” and agreed in principle that the company would continue to search for the wreckage of the plane. The search will begin in a new area of about 15,000 square kilometers of seabed in the southern Indian Ocean.